Little wonder, therefore, to find the new team at LocalWorld flagging up that ‘trend’ for all they are worth… the sub-head makes for an interesting read, too.

‘Targeting niche groups isn’t just an online trend. Brands are finding that with innovation in regional press, local activity is a valuable tool.’

‘Innovation in regional press…’ Therein lies the challenge. And has done since the moment that the Web was born.

For many a nice reason, I’ve found myself knocking around with the bright, young things of London ad land over the last six months. Those paid to consult; to develop marketing strategies to be pitched at CMO and board level.

And as more and more senior corporate comms teams spread the word that national brands need to re-visit the world that is local, so that Marketing Week article will resonate more and more with those that actually hold the advertising purse strings.

So, let’s do the journey.

One of my take-aways from mingling with the bright, young things of national ad agency land is that they ‘get’ two of the three pillars of Eric Schmidt’s wisdom – with bells and whistles on. They are more convinced by mobile and social than anyone; they have lived their late twenty-something London lives around both paradigms.

It is the third – local – that causes the problem; the mind-shift that rocks their top-down, London world. That view that Leeds is a small village somewhere north of Kilburn.

But if Schimdt – the exec chairman of Google, no less – is right; that the winning future platforms will be something that involves mobile, social and local; then AdLand needs to swiftly re-calibrate its thinking.

That if their client – say, Hollister – has picked up on this trend, how do we deliver a campaign to match? That ticks all three of the boxes prescribed by Schmidt? A campaign that is mobile, social and local…

And if you want to layer on another wind of change blowing up Charlotte Street, how about throwing Cindy Gallop into the mix? That advertising needs to be a force for good; that it needs to view the world… ‘From the bottom up…’

And this is where the local landscape in the UK makes for such fascinating viewing right now.

Read the rationale behind ESTV’s success and it is fascinating – and proves, again, that even in the very bowels of OfCom, someone is seeing something afoot in local.

‘ESTV’s proposals also provided important opportunities for close local community involvement, taking into account, in particular, its proposals for IPTV services in each London borough which would be included in its programming commitments…

So here is the first challenge for the LocalWorld. And the rest of the regional newspaper groups in their current, tree-stainer guise. They are not the only people about to fight for Hollister’s local ad dollars.

Here is the second one. Let’s drill Hollister into our local world. Take, Cambridge.

I have no doubt that – right now – LocalWorld are running round like no-one’s business building a networked platform across all their various properties that will allow the cool kids running the Hollister campaign to ‘get’ why they should be on that platform.